On May 30, 2018, two low-income citizens facing permanent license revocation filed this class action in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. The case was assigned to Chief Judge Thomas D. Schroeder. The plaintiffs sued the commissioner of the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) under §1983 for alleged violations of Fourteenth Amendment Due Process. The plaintiff class was represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of North Carolina.

The parties sought class action status for a statewide class of those whose driver’s licenses had been indefinitely revoked for failure to pay traffic tickets. The state's statute required automatic license revocation after 40 days after a court judgment and nonpayment of the traffic ticket. This affected hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents. The class claimed the DMV’s enforcement of the statute failed to assess the plaintiffs’ abilities to pay or whether their non-payment was willful, because the DMV revoked licenses before conducting pre-deprivation hearings. The plaintiff class sought declaratory relief stating the North Carolina statute and the DMV’s enforcement was unconstitutional. They also sought to enjoin the DMV from revoking future licenses with a preliminary and permanent injunction, and to mandate the DMV to lift prior revocations. The plaintiffs requested to certify two classes of individuals: first, those in danger of having their licenses indefinitely revoked in the near future, and second, those who already had their licenses indefinitely revoked.

On August 7, 2018, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint that added two plaintiffs to the suit and a second motion for preliminary injunction. On August 21, 2018 the defendant filed an answer to the amended complaint and a motion for judgment on the pleadings.

As of October 2018, the case was ongoing. An initial pretrial conference was scheduled for December 17, 2018.

Hannah Basalone - 10/10/2018


compress summary